


Spice

by NyteFlyer



Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries (Movies)
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, Humor, M/M, m/m romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:22:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyteFlyer/pseuds/NyteFlyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donald’s f - - - - d.  Both literally and figuratively.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spice

Back when we first got married, exchanging gag gifts on New Year’s Eve sounded like a good idea.  But after what happened this year, I’m starting to rethink that particular holiday tradition.

 

We saw in 2012 the way we’d seen it in every year for over a decade – in bed.   By the time the ball dropped in Times Square and every Guy Lombardo wannabe in America struck up a sappy rendition of “Auld Lang Syne,” the love of my life and I were kicking back in a happy huddle, basking in the afterglow (our second of the evening) and sipping champagne, surrounded by the remains of fruit and cheese platters and bowls of assorted chocolates.  I wrapped myself even tighter around Timmy, weighing the merits of going for Round Three versus just scooting away from the wet spot, pulling up the covers and calling it a night.  Judging by the kiss we shared at the stroke of midnight, Round Three seemed like a viable possibility, but just as my tongue started reintroducing itself to Timmy’s tonsils, the slippery bastard gently but firmly extracted himself and started rummaging through the top drawer of his nightstand. 

 

“Happy New Year, handsome,” he said,  handing me a crinkling, foil-wrapped box. We shared another kiss, though this time he didn’t give me a chance to initiate the tongue-tonsil connection before leaning back on the pillows and smiling expectantly. 

 

“Happy New Year, beautiful,” I said after doing a little rummaging of my own.  I watched for his reaction, grinning when he rolled his eyes because we’d both picked the same wrapping paper. 

 

“Jinx!” we said in unison.  We leaned together, bumping noses and indulging in another slightly chocolate-flavored kiss, short-order variety.  Then – because I’m still a big kid, as Tim likes to point out – I tore into my present.  Two good rips and the paper and bow were history.  I knocked off the lid, turned the box upside down and dumped the contents into my lap. 

 

A long, knitted tube in rainbow colors nestled between my thighs, trailing a black plastic case on a long, thin wire  “It’s…ummmm….”

 

“It’s a battery-operated penis warmer,” he informed me.  “It’s for those long, cold, lonely nights when you’re on surveillance and I can’t warm it for you.  Read the tag.”

 

“Property of Timothy J. Callahan.  If lost or stolen, please return to…” I read his cell number and work numbers, followed by our address and landline.  “You don’t take any chances, do you?”

 

“With you?  Certainly not.  How do you like it?”

 

I stuck my finger inside the Technicolor tubing and flipped the switch.  “Whoa.  That little fucker gets warm in a hurry.  What if it malfunctions and roasts my wienie?”

 

“Then I suppose you’ll have to hurry home so I can administer triage.”

 

I wriggled my eyebrows at him.  “I like the way you administer triage.  I like it a lot.  You could administer some now, if you want.”

 

“I already administered it twice tonight.  I’d think you’d be all triaged out.”

 

“I’m a tough guy.  I can take it.  But go ahead and open your present first.  It might inspire you to even greater heights of triagerie.”

 

Laughing, he turned the package over and shook it.  “Funny that we both bought the same paper.”

 

“Great minds think alike.”

 

“They do.  That’s why I have a feeling there might be an electric testicle toaster in here.”

 

“Not exactly.  But I do hope it’ll warm the little rascals in its own way.”

 

“It feels like a book,” he said, methodically loosening the tape on one end so the paper wouldn’t tear.  “You didn’t buy me Dick Tracy porn again, did you?  I’ll admit the bondage scenes with The Mole were mildly amusing, and the cell with Moon Maid looming over Junior in dominatrix drag was absolutely a work of art, but--”

 

“It’s not porn.”  I handed him his glasses, knowing he couldn’t see shit without them, then helped myself to a gooey wedge of brie on a cracker.  I chased it with a healthy swig of champagne, swishing it around like mouthwash before swallowing.  It kinda tasted like mouthwash, if you asked me.  I would’ve rather knocked back a few of Timmy’s high-octane martinis than the fizzy stuff, but the price of loving a man with a keen sense of holiday protocol meant sticking with seasonal beverages – whether I wanted to or not.  I’m not saying the bottle of bubbly he’d probably blown half a day’s pay on was bad, exactly.  It just wasn’t my idea of a decent drink.  Maybe if I added a couple of olives….

 

Reading my sex-and-booze-addled mind in that spooky way of his, he stopped peeling tape long enough to pluck three fat blackberries and a handful of raspberries off the fruit plate and drop them into my drink.  Then he started prying away at a second corner of his gift.  This was gonna take all night.

 

“Here, lemme give you a hand.”  I hooked my finger into the corner of the paper it’d taken him three-and-a-half minutes to lovingly coax open and let ’er rip.  Not that I wanted to spoil his sense of occasion, but this was a _gag gift_ , for chrissake, and I wanted him to see what was inside before he had to trade his current glasses in for a pair of bifocals.  Besides, if he really needed to hold onto a piece of silver foil covered with millennium-blue spangles as a sentimental keepsake, he had a whole roll to harvest if from.  Two whole rolls, come to think of it. 

 

He gave me his best Indulgent Parent look before sliding the book free of the silver tatters.  He was smiling as he turned it over to check out the front cover, but when he saw the title, it seemed to me the smile stiffened ever so slightly, making the subtle shift from genuine to socially polite.

 

“ _The Spice of Life:  101 Ways to Add Variety to a Routine Sex Life_ ,” he read.  I may have been imagining it, but I thought I heard the smallest bit of extra emphasis on the word _routine_. 

 

“Kenny brought a copy to the office one day, and he was reading parts out loud while we were eating lunch,” I said as he flipped through the first few pages.  “Some of the things they suggest in there are hilarious – bathtub mud wrestling, wrapping each other in Fruit Roll-Ups and eating your way down to skin, role-playing as your favorite action heroes, all kinds of crazy stuff.  And wait til you see the illustrations!  I almost choked on my Quarter Pounder when I saw the one on page—”

 

“I can imagine,” he said quietly, letting the book fall shut.  His smile wasn’t just stiff anymore, it was set in concrete.  “Thank you for the gift.  Now, if you don’t mind, I think it’s time to clean up the leftovers and call it a night.”  He started to set the book on his nightstand, but after a second’s hesitation, dropped it into the top drawer instead. 

 

“What’s the matter?” I asked, catching his wrist as he reached for his pajama bottoms.  Pajama bottoms are always a bad sign.  When Timmy just slips into his robe it’s one thing, but pulling on pajama bottoms is a sure-fire indicator that the festivities are over for the night.  My hopes of us seeing in the new year with Round Three were fading fast.

 

“I’m fine,” he said.  “Everything’s fine.  It’s been a nice night, but it’s getting late and my parents are driving up for a late brunch, which in DadSpeak means probably sometime after 10:00 a.m. but definitely before 11:00.  We’re all supposed to meet at Kelly’s, remember, and go to the restaurant from there.”

 

“What’s the big deal?  They said they’d call us when they hit town, didn’t they?”

 

“Yes, but I’d like to make it to Kelly’s before they do, if at all possible.  If Dad has to wait around for us, he’ll assume we’re late because we’re having sex.   I don’t know about you, but I think the less time my father spends speculating on our wild and perverted sex life, the better.  Especially since it’s really so innocent and _routine_.” 

 

Again, the slight emphasis on that word.  I scrambled into my boxers and helped Timmy carry the dirty dishes downstairs.  What in the hell had I been thinking when I bought Timmy that book?  He understood that it was meant as a joke, I was sure of that much.  I knew he was secure in our relationship, confident in his ability to keep me happy and satisfied between the sheets.  He never had reason to doubt that I loved him and only him, that he was the only man I wanted to be with, the only person I could even imagine myself being with.

 

Timmy loved me, trusted me, believed in me.   He believed in himself, too – most of the time.  But you can’t live with someone as long as I’ve lived with Timmy and not realize that sometimes…some small percentage of the time…he doubts himself.  The guys he’d dated before we met, starting with that lying douchebag Andrew McWhirter and leading up to the idiot who dumped him just before I came along, weren’t exactly confidence builders.  Each, in his own way, had managed to get across the not-so-subtle message that Timmy wasn’t good enough to keep them interested for long, that he didn’t quite measure up, that – God forbid – he was boring. 

 

Timothy J. Callahan, _boring?_    

 

Once the leftovers were packed away in plastic containers and the dishwasher was loaded, we fed the cat and checked the locks, then trekked back upstairs.  We took turns brushing our teeth, then Timmy straightened the covers while I set the alarm and turned out the light.  We weren’t doing a lot of talking, which was okay since I knew I’d screwed up and he knew I knew, but I had no clue what to say to make it right.  We kissed goodnight like the old married couple I guess we were – not a tongue or a tonsil in sight – and he turned on his side, facing away from me.  I snuggled in close, my chest pressed against his back and my legs curved along the same lines as his own, and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing so tight I heard his breath catch.

 

“Happy New Year, sweetheart,” I whispered, nuzzling the warm curve of his neck, his cheek, his ear.  “I’m so lucky to have you.  God, Timmy, I love you so much!”

 

“I love you, too,” he said, looking back over his shoulder to give me a second, much more thorough kiss before settling in, his own arms folding over mine to hold them in place. 

 

I lay there holding him and just listening to him breathe for a long time before he finally relaxed into sleep.  Just before he drifted off, he murmured one word, and as limp as he was at that point and as blurred as his voice was from sleep, I could still hear an edge there.

 

_Routine._

 

He wasn’t pissed off at me, at least I knew that much.  But I also knew that without meaning to, I’d managed to rub salt into an old wound.   And Timmy, being Timmy, wasn’t about to let it go quite yet.  I might not have gotten to enjoy a third round of lovemaking that night, but one thing was certain:

 

I was thoroughly fucked.

 

* * * *

 

We slept through the alarm the next morning, of course, and had to get ready in a rush.  Once Timmy was safely in the shower, I raided his nightstand.  The plan was to swipe that damned book and trash it before it could do any further damage to his bruised ego.  But it wasn’t there.  I checked under his pillow and under the bed, between the mattress and box spring, in the closet and every place I could think to look  downstairs, including the recycle bin and amidst the cold ashes in the fireplace.  Nothing.  Either we’d been robbed by a sexually frustrated burglar with one helluva narrow focus, or Timmy’d gotten up in the middle of the night and shoved it down the garbage disposal.  One way or another, it was gone, and I wasn’t sure whether I should be worried or relieved.

 

And yeah, we were late meeting his folks for brunch.  James’ latest cholesterol reading had been off the charts and his blood pressure wasn’t far behind it, so Marion made him order grapefruit and a bowl of oatmeal instead of his usual Denver omelet and double rasher of bacon.  Between grousing about the food and issuing dire warnings about what that damned liberal was up to in the White House, James kept giving us the stink eye. Timmy was right, the old boy thought we’d been too busy fucking each other’s brains out to make it to Kelly’s on time.  There was a speculative quality to his long, measured looks that shriveled my balls.  God knows what perverted pleasures he thought we’d been up to – something involving scuba gear and farm animals, no doubt.

 

I spent the rest of that day and the next two nights going out of my way to be especially attentive to Timmy, bringing home flowers and a bottle of wine Monday night and taking him to dinner at our favorite Italian place on Tuesday, hoping against hope that the _Spice_ incident was well behind us. 

 

On the surface, it was business as usual, and he seemed as warm and affectionate as ever.  But something felt…off.  He wasn’t as talkative as usual, which worried me.  When Timmy isn’t talking, he’s thinking, and most of the time, whatever he’s thinking doesn’t exactly bode well for yours truly.  Over the next couple of days, he shot me enough long, measured looks to put his father to shame.  That goddamned book magically rematerialized when he thought I wasn’t watching, and he filled a pocket-sized notepad with furtive scribblings. 

 

Timmy was planning something, and I had nobody to blame but myself.  All I could do was gird my loins, as the saying goes, and brace myself for the inevitable.

 

* * * *

 

On Wednesday, I pulled a late-nighter, crawling into bed long after Timmy’d fallen asleep with Michael Cunningham’s latest novel in hand. I marked his place in the book and set his glasses safely aside, then slipped in beside him, smiling the way only he can make me smile as he instinctively turned over and curled himself around me, his soft, rhythmic snores never missing so much as a beat. 

 

When I finally pried my eyes open the next morning, I found him standing over me, a breakfast tray piled high with French toast and all the trimmings in hand, wearing nothing but a bow tie, his best dinner jacket, and a smile.  Breakfast did double duty as an early lunch, and over the next couple of hours, we found out that French toast tastes just as good cold as hot and that maple syrup tastes good on everything.  It took an extra-long, extra-hot shower to get me presentable for my noon meeting with a new client, but somehow Timmy got through the morning with his jacket unrumpled and his tie spot-free. 

 

When I asked him what his excuse for missing a half day’s work was gonna be, he just shrugged and said, “Don’t worry about it.  I just thought this would be a nice break from our usual _routine_.”

 

Ouch.  Still, if this was how he planned to get even with me for my bad taste in New Year’s Eve gifts, I was pretty sure I could live with it.

 

Over the next week and a half, I was on the receiving end of a sexual surprise almost daily.  He plied me with exotic massage techniques and even more exotic sex toys, had his evil way with me in the backseat of the car at midnight, performed a striptease in the middle of my office while Kenny was off picking up lunch, filmed a particularly wild and wooly session in front of the fireplace and played it over and over on the new flat-screen as we repeated the performance.  He didn’t dress up like Batman or suggest bathtub mud wrestling, thank God, didn’t fill our bedroom with scuba equipment or livestock.  The only animal life in sight was our sadly overweight feline-in-residence, Tux, who made it a point to clear the room well before the nightly festivities began. 

 

It was all sexy and silly and fun, and I enjoyed every minute of it – almost.  I still felt guilty that he was doing all this because I’d made him feel bad about himself, but anytime I tried to tell him as much, he changed the subject.  Obviously, Timmy thought this situation was best resolved with actions rather than words.

 

* * * *

 

I’m not a superstitious man, but I gotta admit, this particular Friday the 13th lived up to its rep.  On the way home after a long, hard day in the trenches, I found myself wondering what Timmy had in store for me next.  I’d had a lot of fun the past few days, and I was pretty sure he had, too.  But as I crept along the thruway, wedged between the other poor jerks who were stuck in rush hour traffic, I found myself yearning for some good, old-fashioned _sex_ sex, the kind we used to have without gimmicks or props, the kind we only needed two things for – our hard-ons and our hearts.

 

Enough was enough.

 

I called out for Timmy as I walked through the front door, ready to lay it on the line for him right then and there.   But instead of an answer, the response I got was a crash loud enough to make light fixtures rattle, followed immediately by a feline yowl and an all-to-human cry of pain.  Tux shot down the stairs, looking like a wild-eyed, hairy cannonball with whiskers, and disappeared into the kitchen.  As for me, I took the stairs two at a time, yelling for Timmy as I ran.

 

“I’m here,” he groaned as I burst through the bedroom door.  “I can hear you.  You don’t have to shout.”

 

He was there, all right, stark naked and twisted into an impossible position on the carpet, a broken bedside lamp and that book – that goddamned fucking book – by his side.  I fell to my knees and tried to gather him in my arms, but his agonized yelp made me back off fast.

 

“God, Timmy, what the hell happened?”

 

“It’s my back,” he said.  “I fell—”

 

“I’m calling an ambulance.  Don’t try to move, okay?  If anything’s broken—”

 

“I don’t want an ambulance!  I didn’t break my back, I just threw it out.  I must have turned the wrong way and pulled a muscle.  That’s what made me fall off.”

 

“Fall off?  Fall off what?  The only thing in here is the….”  I rose slowly, taking in the scene.  Instead of our usual plush comforter and 500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, the bed was covered in big, bright red, blue, yellow, and green dots. In the middle of it all lay a spinner on a cardboard square.  Suddenly, everything became crystal clear.

 

“Twister?  You were playing Twister?”  I fought the urge to laugh.  “But isn’t the point of that game to get tangled up with other people?”

 

“I haven’t played since high school, so I thought I’d try a few practice rounds while I was waiting for you to come home.  I should have done some stretches to limber up first, apparently.”  

 

“Apparently.”  I rubbed a hand over my mouth, physically trying to wipe the smile off my face.  Then Timmy groaned, and the urge to laugh went out the window.  My baby was in pain, and all I could do was stand there smirking like a moron.  Kneeling beside him once again, I touched his cheek, stroked his hair.  “We need to get you to a doctor, sweetheart.”

 

“Just don’t call an ambulance, all right?  I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

 

“Do you think you can make it downstairs?  I’ll drive if we can figure out how to get you into the car.”

 

“Just help me get off this floor.  The rest will take care of itself.”

 

The rest didn’t take care of itself, but together we managed somehow. It took about 10 minutes of concentrated effort to get him off the floor and sitting on the edge of the bed, then another ten to dress him in a comfortable pair of sweats.  Every motion was a study in misery for him, and I felt like a first-class prick for making him move.  Once he was on his feet, he felt better, though – it was the turning and bending that hurt him the worst.  While he was momentarily upright, hanging onto the door frame for support, I grabbed his wallet and my keys, then picked up the _Spice_ book and stuffed it into my jacket, telling myself that the doctors might need it for diagnostic purposes. 

 

The stairs were tough, but somehow we made it down them and out to the car.  I red-lined it all way to Albany Memorial, and 45 minutes later he was stretched out on a gurney,  Clutching my hand in a death grip as he waited to be taken to x-ray.  Every few minutes, a muscle spasm would hit like a ton of bricks, and I’d think he was going to come off the bed. 

 

“Can’t you give him something for the pain?” I asked the ER doctor when she finally put in an appearance.  “There’s no reason he should have to lie here all night, suffering like this.”

 

“As soon as we get a better look at what’s going on with him, we’ll be able to make him more comfortable.  Someone should be coming for him any time now.  In the meantime, I need to get some information from you.  Can you describe the events leading up to the onset of the pain?”

 

They say that in times of stress, your whole life flashes before your eyes.  In this case, the past two weeks were all my subconscious seemed to consider relevant.  For the sake of expediency, I decided to cut to the chase.

 

“He was playing—”  I stopped short when that death grip of Timmy’s clamped down even tighter on my hand, threatening to crush a bone or two I might actually need later.  He stopped moaning and nailed me with a glare that could peel paint. 

 

“I was playing with the cat,” he said.  “It got tangled in my feet and I tripped.  I hit my back on the way down.”

 

“That must have been a heck of a fall,” the doctor said.

 

“You have no idea,” I told her.

 

An orderly appeared and wheeled Timmy to the radiology department.  I walked along with him as far as they let me, then gave his hand a squeeze and wished him luck. 

“When we were joking about triage the other night, I didn’t think we were being quite so literal,” he said.

 

“Tell me about  it.”

 

It was a slow night in the ER.  While I was waiting for them to bring Timmy back from x-ray, a young nurse wandered over to chat.

 

“The same thing happened to my cousin,” she said.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“My cousin,” she repeated.  “He fell and messed up his back.   He didn’t trip over a cat, though.  He got hurt because of some crazy book.”

 

“What book is that?” I asked.

 

“I can’t remember the name – something about saving boring marriages.  It was meant to be funny, but you’d be surprised how many people took it seriously and ended up getting hurt.”

 

“It wasn’t called _The Spice of Life,_ was it?”

 

“That was it!  My cousin saw a picture of a naked couple playing Twister in there, so he decided he and his wife should try it.  It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if he hadn’t put the mat on top of their waterbed.  The first big slosh, and onto the floor they went.  Megan was okay, but Jeremy ended up in traction.   I wish I could find a copy of that book just so I could see what gave them such a nutty idea.  Can you even imagine anything so crazy?”

 

“It’s a stretch,” I said, “but I think I can manage it.”

 

When Timmy came back from x-ray, the first thing out of his mouth that wasn’t an agonized groan were the words, “I’m sorry.”

 

“Hey now, what are you apologizing for?” I asked, leaning over so I could rub the back of my knuckles over his cheek.

 

“They said I pulled a muscle and either strained or sprained my lumbar spine – they’re not sure which.  Just to make it more interesting, I seem to have pinched my sciatic nerve, as well.  The doctor wants to keep me here overnight.  From what they’re saying, I’ll probably be out of commission for a couple of weeks, at least until the inflammation goes down.  I won’t be able to….”

 

“Screw around while you’re standing on your head?  Play Twister?  Skydive naked and give me a blow job somewhere between jumping out of the plane and hitting the ground?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

Laughing softly, I kissed his forehead, the tip of his nose, his lips.  “Honey, it’s all right.  Really.”

 

“I’ve worked hard to spice things up for you, Donald.  Once I’m back on my feet, I’ll try to do a better job of it.  I don’t want you to think I’m going to let our sex life fall back into the same old boring routine.”

 

“Timothy, life with you is spicy enough.  You don’t have to work at it.  Did it ever occur to you that showing me how much you love me shouldn’t feel like work at all?  And what the hell’s wrong with routine?  I like routine.  Routine is comfortable.  Routine is stable.  Routine is _sane_.”

 

“But the book—”

 

“That book was a gag gift, Timothy.  It was a joke.  It wasn’t a hint that I wasn’t satisfied with our sexual status quo.  I thought you’d get a laugh out of it, that’s all, not adopt it as a manual on how to live.”

 

“You haven’t been enjoying yourself the past few days?”

 

“It’s been fun.  A little variety’s a good thing in any marriage, I think.  But I didn’t fall for you because you could come up with a million variations of the same theme.  I fell for you because I knew you’d always be there for me, that your love for me would never change.  That’s the meat of our relationship, sweetheart.  A little extra seasoning’s cool from time to time, but it’s not the part that keeps us alive.”

 

“That’s a rather carnivorous way of looking at it,” he said.

 

“Yeah, well, I’m a carnivorous kind of guy.”

 

I watched a wave of pain wash over his face.  “I wish they’d hurry with my medication.  Every time I move, it feels like an electric shock shoots through my back and down my leg.”

 

“I bet they’ll get you good and doped up as soon as you’re admitted.  In the meantime, try not to move, okay?  Just relax and breathe.  I’ve got you.”

 

“You always do.”  He slipped his hand into mine.  “Once I’m settled in a room, you should head home, though.  If they give me muscle relaxers, I’ll be out of it the second they kick in, and you need to get some rest.”

 

I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed each knuckle tenderly.  “Since when do I rest when I’m away from you?  I’m not going anywhere.”

 

“Good,” he said.

 

While the nurses were hooking up his IV and slipping him that long-awaited mickey, I stepped into the hallway to call Kenny and ask him to cancel my appointments for the next day, then stopped to take a leak.  As I was heading out of the men’s room, I spotted the little nurse I’d been talking to earlier.  I pulled the book out of my jacket and handed it to her as she passed by. 

 

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said.

 

“Hey, it’s that book we were talking about!  I didn’t realize you had your own copy.”  A sly smile spread across her face as realization dawned.  “Does this mean your partner….”

 

“The details of my partner’s medical condition, as well as how he developed it, are strictly confidential.” 

 

She gave me a conspiratorial wink.  “Gotcha.  I heard he’d been admitted – poor guy!  If you’ll write down your name and number, I’ll return this to you as soon as I’m finished with it.”

 

“Keep it.”

 

“Seriously?  Are you sure your love life won’t be too bland without it?”

 

“Take it from me, life’s simple pleasures are definitely the best. After tonight, I think we’ll be going back to the basics.  Turns out all that spice didn’t really agree with us, after all.”


End file.
